IF a member of your close family posed as a homeless person would you recognise them on the street?

While most would surely answer yes, a new video campaign for the New York City Rescue Mission aims to show just how invisible homeless people have become.

Filmed on the streets of New York’s Tribeca and Soho districts, the social experiment takes ordinary people and disguises them as homeless and has them come face-to-face with their relatives on the streets.

Not a single person recognises their wife, brother or mother.

“We don’t look at them. We don’t take a second look,” New York City Rescue Mission’s Michelle Tolson told The Huffington Post.

The people in the Make Them Visible film were actors contacted to take part in a documentary video. Ms Tolson said their families were then contacted separately to see if they’d be willing to take part in the experiment.

Invisible ... one of the participants walks passed her sister without noticing.Source:Supplied

Film director Jun Diaz told the Huffington Post that each person walked past their family members without a second glance.

“There’s only one person that didn’t make it into the film — because they couldn’t handle the fact that they walked by their family,” he said.

Participants only realised what was happening after they were shown vision of themselves walking past.

“The experiment is a powerful reminder that the homeless are people, just like us, with one exception,” New York City Rescue Mission executive director Craig Mayes said.

“They are in trouble and in pain. And they are someone’s uncle or cousin or wife.”